


The Art of Living

by Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler



Series: Doctor Tenor; Soldier Spy [6]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Development, Developing Relationship, Emotionally Repressed, Episode: s01e12 Heroes and Demons, Gen, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-06 06:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13405488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler/pseuds/Lt_Cmdr_Scribbler
Summary: “The art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” -Havelock EllisWhen Tyvaa accepts Harry Kim's invitation to the Beowulf holo-program, she is de-materialized like no half-Andorian has been de-materialized before. She doesn't cope with it well, and our regular cast tries to help as best they can. Post "Heroes & Demons", with emphasis on "Why Doesn't Anyone On Voyager Use The Holodeck For Therapy, They All Clearly Need It”





	The Art of Living

**Author's Note:**

> In which the author also projects the less-fun aspects of her mindscape on her OC because she also doesn't go to therapy.
> 
> Sorry to have two very talk-y works back-to-back, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled episode-based content soon! There's a bunch of different references to multiple season 1 episodes in here, and in no particular order. "Cathexis" and "Faces" still takes place after "Heroes and Demons" but otherwise the timeline for season 1 has been tossed out the window, and the next work will be Season 2 based!
> 
> On a related note, thanks to ThatAdroitGeek for dealing with all my timey-wimey shenanigans and bad grammar, as well as encouraging me to keep up this series, which has been updating sporadically for about a year!

Even with the chief engineer as her roommate, Tyvaa often had trouble trying to meet up with B’Elanna for meals. Most days, even Chakotay couldn’t drag B’Elanna away from the engine room, so Tyvaa valued the times when she could harangue her friend into coming to the mess hall for even a cup of Neelix’s coffee-substitute. Knowing B’Elanna’s workaholic tendencies, Tyvaa was surprised to hear her combadge chirp as she filed medical records in Sickbay.

“ _Torres to Tyvaa._ ”

“Tyvaa here, Bee. What’s going on?” she asked warily.

The engineer scoffed from her end of the connection. “ _It’s lunchtime, Tyv. At least, I assume it is, since Chakotay had to drag me away from my console. Don't tell me you forgot._ ”

Tyvaa smiled at the mental image, but shook her head. “You two go on without me,” she insisted. “My shift is almost over anyway, I’ll just eat in our quarters.”

B’Elanna murmured something that her combadge didn’t pick up, presumably to Chakotay, but before Tyvaa could comment, the half-Klingon steamrolled over her. “ _Your metabolism is higher than mine, so if I’m hungry, then you’re starving. Don’t make Chakotay order you to join us for lunch, Tyv._ ”

“Alright, fine, if only to stop Chakotay from abusing his powers as Commander,” Tyvaa said. Her dry tone of voice made B’Elanna chuckle, and she smiled, proud to get a reaction out of her friend. She added, “I’ll be there in a few. Tyvaa out.”

She glanced around Sickbay, and poked her head inside the Doctor’s office. Tyvaa offered a smile to the seated hologram as he raised his head, and she said, “I’m meeting Lieutenant Torres and Commander Chakotay for lunch, alright? I’ll be back before my shift is over, I promise.”

The Doctor smiled weakly in reply and said, “That’s perfectly alright, Tyvaa. Take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks, Doc,” she replied, slightly bemused by the Doctor’s odd response. He’s never told me to take my time having lunch with B’Elanna before. Maybe he wants more time to himself?

Tyvaa shook her pondering out of her head as she walked into the mess hall, which was almost conspicuously empty except for Neelix in his little kitchen and Chakotay, B’Elanna, Harry Kim, and Tom Paris all clustered around one table. All four officers looked up when Tyvaa entered, and her antennae curved backward slightly, echoing the surprised arch of her eyebrows.

“What’s this?” Tyvaa asked. Her tone was light, but she crossed her arms over chest as she watched each of them for a reaction.

Tom stood first, and spread his hands in a genial gesture. “It’s an intervention!”

“What Tom means is,” Harry added hastily, “is that we’re worried about you, Tyvaa.”

She laughed, but the sound was unconvincing, even to her own ears. “Why? I’m doing just fine. I’m sleeping well enough, my work hasn’t suffered—“

B’Elanna shook her head firmly. “Sure you sleep well, but only after you’ve worked yourself to exhaustion. You’re bringing work back to our quarters every night, but the Doctor tells me that you’re not at all busy in Sickbay during your shift.”

“And you’ve skipped Karaoke Night at Sandrine’s for the past four weeks,” added Tom. “You proposed Karaoke Night in the first place, and now you’re avoiding the holodeck like there’s a plague? Something doesn’t add up.”

Tyvaa’s shoulders tightened at the mention of the holodeck, and that detail didn’t escape the scrutiny of her friends. Tom and B’Elanna shared a satisfied look, while Chakotay approached Tyvaa and placed a reassuring hand on her arm.

“Is this about the Beowulf program?” Chakotay asked.

Tyvaa didn’t respond for a long moment, but she stepped away from Chakotay. She exclaimed, “You just had a prolonged out of body experience, ‘Tay. You were _brain dead_ ; you can’t say you were acting normal after that. And B’Elanna, you and Tom got back from the Viidians, what, a week ago? The Beowulf thing happened a whole month ago, I hardly think--”

Her own combadge chirped, bringing an abrupt end to her rant. “ _Tuvok to Lieutenant zh’Quallath._ ”

“Tyvaa here,” she answered brusquely.

“ _I believe you promised to attend Kes’ session today to compare your mental abilities. Has something come up_?”

She had promised neither Tuvok nor Kes to do anything of the sort, but the excuse was the perfect out. “Thank you for reminding me, Tuvok, it must’ve slipped my mind. I’ll only be a moment. Tyvaa out.” Tyvaa clasped her hands behind her, standing stiff and tall.

“Commander. Gentlemen. Lieutenant. Good day,” she acknowledged before turning on her heel and walking out of the mess hall with the longest strides she could use.

As Tuvok’s quarters were also on Deck Five, it was a quick walk to her destination, and Tyvaa finally relaxed her stiff antennae and shoulders as she pressed on the panel outside his quarters. When the doors slid open, Tyvaa entered quickly and immediately took a seat in the nearest arm chair. Kes sat in the identical armchair opposite Tyvaa, while Tuvok sat on the couch that ran parallel to a low table.

“Thank you for getting me out of that, Tuvok, and thank you for letting me intrude here, Kes. How did you know to call when you did?” Tyvaa said by way of greeting.

Kes raised an eyebrow in mild amusement. “Did you know how loud you were?”

“As I instructed Kes to listen to the mental plane of the entire ship, she was drawn to your… discussion in the mess hall,” elaborated Tuvok. “You were all quite loud.”

Through a badly-muffled chuckle, Tyvaa said, “I’ve never been more thankful for the internal screaming in my head, then.”

Immediately, Kes frowned. “You’re joking right now? Tyvaa, your friends are right, you aren’t doing well.”

“I suppose you’re right, in a way,” the lieutenant acknowledged. “If you can hear my distress, then I’m clearly not ‘faking it until I make it’ nearly well enough.”

Tuvok’s jaw set firmly to create an expression that would’ve been a scowl on any non-Vulcan. “While I am well aware of your coping methods, Tyvaa, even you must admit that in this instance, ‘faking it’ will not allow you to work through your stress.”

“Then I’d love to have some proper coping suggestions, Tuvok, I really would,” snapped Tyvaa. She did enough proper scowling for the both of them, and her antennae twisted back and forth in agitation. Her fingers dug into the fabric of the armrests, until she consciously released the clenched muscles and clasped her hands over her knees instead.

Tyvaa hadn’t realized that her eyes were shut until she felt a small hand settle on her arm and Tyvaa’s dark eyes fluttered open. Kes’s outstretched arm barely cleared the space between them, and her small fingers gave the smallest of reassuring squeezes before retreating.

“You’re all mixed up,” the Ocampa pointed out. “You haven’t acknowledged what you’re afraid of yet, which is why you haven’t moved past it. Say it, Tyvaa.”

She expected to feel a rock lodged in her throat like all the other times she had tried to work past those weeks worth of fear, but the words seem to spill out of her like a gushing waterfall.

“I’m afraid of losing all my friends out here, and not being able to help them. I’m scared that I’ll die somehow and someone will do something reckless because of it. I’m scared that I’ll be responsible for someone getting hurt. I’m scared that I’ll frighten all my friends away if I tell them this. I already lost someone before, I can’t lose everyone now. The Doctor isn’t even equipped with complex emotions like this but I still know that he can _feel_ and if I frighten off him too, I… I…” Tyvaa found herself gasping for breath, and she heard her heart fluttering in her veins like a hummingbird in a cage.

Another hand rested on the shoulder of her uniform, and Tyvaa looked up to see that Tuvok had risen from his seat on the couch. He nodded approvingly, and tapped his combadge.

“Have you completed the transfer, Ensign Kim?” Tuvok asked.

“Everything is set, Commander.”

“Good. One transport to Holodeck One, if you would.”

Too late, Tyvaa cottoned on to their scheme. “Oh, no, no, there is no way—” But the familiar tug of the transporter was already pulling her away. It was so very different from the rolling wave of photonic energy she had experienced a month prior that Tyvaa almost forgot to be incredibly uncomfortable.

When Tyvaa rematerialized, she found herself sitting on a grassy knoll, facing a brilliant sunset. She recognised the location easily, with the bright golden light glancing off the top of Mount Tamalpais. The memory of clutching at the gritty rock while her heart pounded in her head was terrifying, but Tyvaa remembered Chante Poirot’s warm reassurances and spun-sunshine hair in the same space, so she looked on the scene with guilty fondness. 

Her antennae could sense his presence not far behind her, and Tyvaa slumped her shoulders in resignation. She patted the warm ground beside her, and to her own surprise, the Doctor actually sat down and drew his knees up to his chest. The image made her smile, but she turned her face away as a tentative warm feeling curled around her heart. When she remembered what they were here for, the light happiness faded away quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she began quietly, hardly louder than the faint breeze. “I never really dealt well with grief, or loss, or guilt. I was so preoccupied with trying not to worry anyone that I apparently worried everyone.” Tyvaa chuckled mirthlessly, but the Doctor stayed still beside her.

He admitted, “I… can’t say that I know what I’m doing here, but your friends were convinced that I was the best… person for you to talk to once you acknowledged that something was wrong. Do you agree?”

“That you’re a person? Of course I do,” Tyvaa answered readily, but a somber look from the Doctor wiped away the cheerful smile she’d plastered on. With a sigh, Tyvaa propped her arms out behind her and let her legs stretch out in front of her.

“Yes, I agree. I guess confiding in you that I wasn’t doing well was what scared me the most after the… ordeal last month. You can’t tell me you don’t still get freaked out when you remember you temporarily lost your arm,” Tyvaa hastily added, almost confrontationally.

The Doctor shook his head. “I vanish into a void of nothingness on a regular, almost daily basis, Tyvaa. I don’t believe there’s any room for comparison.” In a softer tone, he added, “And scared? Why?”

Tyvaa seceded his point with a shrug of her shoulders, and answered, “Because I didn’t want to seem like a bad example of an Andorian— or a Human, for that matter. Your good opinion matters to me, Doc.” She spoke the last sentence with a teasing sort of tone, exaggerated sweetness paired with a self-deprecating smile, but she balled one hand into a fist and tugged at the blades of grass.

“I… lost somebody before, on Andoria,” she began. “Way before I even thought about joining Starfleet. Losing someone so young, so soon before all our dreams were going to come true… It sent me into a tailspin. I couldn’t focus, I didn’t want to eat or sleep. I felt responsible, although, logically, there was nothing I could’ve done.

“He had gotten sick with something no one on Andoria had ever seen. I had just been about to start working for a prominent medical practise on-planet, so I thought maybe I could do something, anything. But, he died. I left Andoria faster than I ever thought I would, and when I enrolled in the Academy and got my head on straight, I resolved that I’d never make anyone feel the way I’d felt. So I stopped practicing medicine and took the Operations track. I thought distance would help. Clearly, I was mistaken,” Tyvaa said, gesturing to her face. In the short moments while she been talking, hot tears had streaked down her face. She adopted a position like the Doctor’s, wrapping her arms around her knees and curling into a ball. Tyvaa leaned her forehead into her arms, effectively hiding her face.

The Doctor began to speak, soft and insistent. “If I know anything as a doctor, it’s that most things need time to heal, and that a broken bone, when set improperly, is more prone to breakage. You just needed the right conditions to heal, Tyvaa. No one can blame you for that.”

Tyvaa propped her chin up on her knee, and tilted her head to look at the Doctor still sitting beside her. She allowed herself a tiny smile as she noticed the sincerity written in every line of his face, and the kindness that sparkled from depths of his dark brown eyes. She realized how she must look, with a soft, giddy smile and leisurely drooping antennae, maybe a slightly moony look in her brown eyes, and she straightened up suddenly, pulling at the hems of her sleeves and breaking eye-contact.

“No one but me,” Tyvaa retorted, her tone light despite the disparaging words.

He rolled his eyes at her, and began to stand. “Well, you aren’t Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, so I think you’re allowed some illogical behavior now and again, so long as you get some sense talked into you once in a while,” said the Doctor. His dry tone was overshadowed by the warm smile on his face. He extended a hand to Tyvaa, and she laughed as she took it and rose to her feet.

“Are there any other recommendations I should keep in mind? If you want, I know a very successful doctor you could collaborate with. He revived someone who had been brain-dead for eighteen hours once,” Tyvaa added teasingly, and grinned wide as she was rewarded with a quiet chuckle.

“If I think of any, I’ll be sure to tell you, Tyvaa,” said the Doctor dryly, although with a smile.  
Tyvaa squeezed his hand in silent gratitude, and relaxed her fingers to curl loosely around the Doctor’s, hesitant to let go.

“I should probably call the arch now, shouldn’t I? Whatever time they allotted for this little therapy session is over now, surely, and I should, ah, go face them now, right? Right,” Tyvaa babbled. She curled her fingers into her palms, and took a small step out of the Doctor’s space. Glancing at his face, she said tentatively, “I’ll see you tomorrow in Sickbay, right?”

“Of course,” the Doctor answered, taking his own step backward.

Tyvaa smiled with a prepared witty remark on her tongue, but a chirp of her communicator cut her off.

“ _Paris to Tyvaa and the Doctor. Just letting you know, your holodeck time is ticking down to the seconds and I don’t think the captain will be happy when she finally figures out who’s behind all of this beaming too and fro and wasting ship’s resources_.”

“I’ll be in Sickbay in two minutes, Paris, calm down,” said Tyvaa, but a smile made its way to her face. “I’m calling the arch right now. Transfer the Doc back, won’t you?”

Tom must have complied without a smart comment, because she barely raised her hand in farewell before the Doctor vanished before her eyes. A sliver of sadness pricked at Tyvaa’s heart at the sight, but she bolstered herself with the thought that he was only in Sickbay.

 _I’m not losing anyone. Not today, and not anytime soon,_ she insisted. The old mantra had grown tired and worn during the past few weeks, but this time, Tyvaa believed it.

**Author's Note:**

> (I know I had Tuvok addressed as Commander when he's not promoted to Lt Commander until like season 3. But, come on, Tuvok's 107 which is at least middle aged for a Vulcan, he taught at the Academy for a stretch, and he's super tight with Janeway. Him not being a Lt Commander sooner never made sense to me.)
> 
> And to everyone curious, Tyvaa is indeed bisexual. Her ex, Chante Poirot, was briefly mentioned in Maquis Infiltrator, and may be references in later works.


End file.
